The
future of peace: A Palestinian viewBy Ghada
Karmi, BBC, 31st October 2000

On 23 October, Israeli Prime
Minster Barak announced that Israel was taking a "time out" from the peace
process.

To many, this was an unnecessary
conformation of what had already become evident in the preceding few weeks
of violence between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Palestinians had made it clear
that the peace process was over for them - at least in its previous form.

A return to the old style peace process,
so enamoured of the West, is futile and will be resisted by a people that
seems to have reached a point of no return.For the vehemence of Palestinian
reaction and its self-sacrificing recklessness must be seen not as some
cynical manipulation by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his aides,
but as a result of years of pent up frustration and anger at Israel and
the "peace process".

The 1993 Oslo Process, which stood
primarily to benefit Israel and which would never have been negotiated
by a strong Palestinian leadership, had been tolerated, even accepted by
most Palestinians for one simple reason: they saw it as the pathway to
an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

So long as the process finally achieved
that goal, then the loss of 78% of old Mandate Palestine, as well as the
humiliations and depredations of the last seven years could be tolerated.

This fact, which has been conveniently
obscured by a gushing Western mythology of "reconciliation", is fundamental
to understanding the current events.

'Inevitable backlash'

It was when, after years of endurance,
the Palestinians discovered the true outline of the coming agreement at
the Camp David talks last July, that they erupted.

To accuse the Palestinian leadership
of orchestrating the violence displays a wilful misunderstanding of the
facts or a malevolent desire to blame the victim They learned that the state
they would get would be far from independent, its borders controlled by
Israel, lacking the major part of East Jerusalem and even its religious
sites.

Not only had Israel taken pre-1967
Palestine - which no Palestinian can forgive or forget - it was also trying
to take land from the remnant left after 1967.

The Palestinian economy, already
in dire straits, would be even more dependent on Israel, and Palestinian
natural resources would remain under Israeli control.

All the waiting had been for nothing,
and as realisation dawned, the backlash was inevitable.

'Spontaneous uprising'

Thus, opposition leader Ariel Sharon's
provocative visit to the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) or Temple Mount
on 28 September was not the cause but the trigger for the subsequent explosion.

The Israeli-inspired campaign to
vilify Yasser Arafat as a leader prepared to sacrifice his people and even
their children for his own ends (whatever they are) is as vicious as it
is untrue To accuse the Palestinian
leadership of orchestrating it displays a wilful misunderstanding of the
facts or a malevolent desire to blame the victim.

That is not to say that Mr Arafat,
like any politician, will not seek to turn a situation to his political
advantage.

But the Israeli-inspired campaign
to vilify him as a leader prepared to sacrifice his people and even their
children for his own ends (whatever they are) is as vicious as it is untrue.

All the evidence points to the eruption
of a spontaneous, popular movement whose "leaders" are young and evenly
distributed across geographic location and socio-economic status.

It is pent-up fury at Israeli occupation
and arrogance that drives Palestinian youths to risk their lives against
live ammunition daily. And it is questionable whether Mr Arafat or any
of his aides, who were also taken by surprise at the explosion, is in control
of the situation.

No popular revolution in history
has ever been stage-managed.

Besieged Palestinians

The Israeli response so far has been
counter-productive.

Besieging Palestinian towns, sealing
off the territories, bombing and shooting, and suspending negotiations
will only increase popular resistance. And though it is possible to crush
civilians by military might, that provides only a short-term respite which
will not last.

Only a radical change of approach
on Israel's part will restart the peace process.

This means termination of the inequitable
Oslo Process and learning to face what Israelis have evaded since 1948:
that a state set up on the land of another people cannot survive for long
by their suppression and denial.

So far, Israelis have succeeded in
just that. Their credit is still high with a compliant America and a guilt-ridden
West. But the reckoning is not there.

It is in the land which they seized
and now share with the Palestinians.

Point of no return

Palestinians have now bloodily demonstrated
that the Oslo model for sharing - an inequitable division of land and resources
that massively favours Israel, backed by a partisan US - is not one they
will accept.

A return to the old style peace process,
so enamoured of the West, is futile and will be resisted by a people that
seem to have reached a point of no return.

They will now demand no less than
a fully independent state on all of the post-1967 territories with East
Jerusalem as its capital.

They should be supported. Israel,
which had a historic opportunity in 1993 to reach an undreamed of settlement
with the very people it had dispossessed has, through its insensitivity
and lack of vision, lost it.

Ghada Karmi, a leader of the Palestinian Community Association in the
UK and an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs,
explains the death of the Oslo-inspired peace process from the point of
view of Palestinians.